At Joaquin Miller Park, volunteers hit the trails

Carolyn Jones

Updated 8:12 pm, Monday, November 25, 2013

Dave Sturgis, fixing a trail at Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland, is one of roughly 600 volunteers who help out.
Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle

Dave Sturgis, fixing a trail at Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland, is...

Volunteers turn out regularly at the park, wielding tools to tackle everything from fixing trails and pulling weeds to pruning plants.
Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle

Volunteers turn out regularly at the park, wielding tools to tackle...

Brent Englund (left) gets a leg up on volunteering with other do-gooders at Oakland's Joaquin Miller Park.
Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle

Brent Englund (left) gets a leg up on volunteering with other...

Volunteers help to fix a trail at Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland on November 23rd 2013. Near 500 volunteers have pitched in to help fix up the park by fixing trails, pulling weeds, and putting in new trail signs.
Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle

Volunteers help to fix a trail at Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland on...

Volunteers help to fix a trail at Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland on November 23rd 2013. Near 500 volunteers have pitched in to help fix up the park by fixing trails, pulling weeds, and putting in new trail signs.
Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle

Volunteers help to fix a trail at Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland on...

Oakland's parks maintenance budget may be dwindling, but you'd never guess that by taking a stroll through the redwoods at Joaquin Miller Park.

Thanks to more than 600 volunteers, the popular 500-acre expanse in the hills looks better than it has in decades. Clean trails, less erosion, new trail signs, less Scotch broom and more oaks are all due to the efforts of hikers, bicyclists, dog walkers, gardeners, horseback riders and others.

"Oh my gosh - we are so grateful," said naturalist Stephanie Benavidez, a supervisor for the city's Parks and Recreation Department. "All that beauty - the greenery, the redwoods - is part of what makes this city special, and we couldn't keep it up without volunteers."

Oakland has slashed its parks maintenance budget over the past few years, leaving only a skeletal staff to care for the city's 130 or so parks, playgrounds and open spaces. In many cases, volunteers have stepped in to fill the gap, doing everything from picking up trash to pruning roses.

Perhaps no park has such an array of uses as Joaquin Miller. In its various hillside pockets is an amphitheater, a dog run, a picnic area, a horse arena, miles of trails, a native plant nursery, a grand cascading man-made waterfall and numerous oddball structures built by the late poet Joaquin Miller, including his own funeral pyre.

Many of the trails and structures date from the 1930s or earlier, as the city took over Miller's property and nearby acreage that had been mostly cleared by loggers after the Gold Rush.

The park is now covered with a thick forest of second-growth redwoods, oaks and bays, and connects to thousands of acres of open space owned by the East Bay Regional Park District.

On a recent Saturday, about 35 mountain bicyclists gathered to build a bypass to the Cinderella Trail to protect an adjacent creek from erosion.

Using grant money from REI, and under the supervision of park staff, the group was using pickaxes and tampers to reroute the trail along a hillside so it would be less steep and less likely to flood when the creek overflowed.

"This park is a great treasure," said Brent Englund, a production manager from Oakland who was helping lead the day's work. "Just a few minutes from the city you can be in the woods, away from it all."

Tom Gandesbery, an environmental consultant from Piedmont, said he decided to get involved because he'd been enjoying its trails for two decades, and figured it was time to give back.

"We have such a high density of humans in the Bay Area. To be able to come up here and feel like there's no one else around ... it's an oasis," he said.

For more information about volunteering, contact Friends of Joaquin Miller Park at www.fojmp.org or call (510) 473-6567.